#1. If you can’t remember what you’re reading, quit reading it. If it’s not good enough to remember, it’s not good enough. Donate not-good-enough to Goodwill. Don’t waste your time.
#2. Start a little reading journal. This is not complicated. You do not have to carry it with you. You do not have to write book reviews on everything you read. It’s simply a method of recording and remembering so you save brain space. It is a smart thing to do if you are a person whose life work involves words. If you want to be inefficient with your brain space, go ahead, but quit complaining when you can’t keep up with the rest of us.
#3. Start reading something that makes you want to stay home all weekend until you finish it. [For some of us, that would be anything. We are known as introverts. It's not necessary to raise your hand at this point.] Not sure what to read? Look, I can only do so much in one lecture. Go to the library. Go to the bookstore. Read one of the thousands of book review sites. Get a few options, bring them home, and read a page or two in each until you hit the one you don’t want to stop reading. Read it.
#4. Surround yourself with books you haven’t read yet. Have a shelf in your bookcase for books you’ve purchased but not yet read. Make a weekly library trip and bring home a stack of books each time. You don’t have to read them all. Keep them near you, grab one when you have a minute; if it’s not interesting, helpful, if it doesn’t matter to you, pull out another. You may cycle through a dozen books every week and only hit on 1 or 2 worthwhile reads. That’s okay.
#5. Remember that when it comes to books, you don’t have to finish what you start. Even if you’re halfway through that novel: if you find yourself not caring whether Dann-o gets the bad guy, quit making yourself read the book. Find something you do care about.
#6: Read in little bits. You don’t have to sit down for 2 hours to read. You can read a page or three in ten minutes. Read simultaneously: keep a book in your purse or computer bag, in your car, by your bed, by the treadmill. You can get through a lot of books if you have them handy and read a bit whenever you can. And something else strange happens, too. When you start reading again, for 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there, you start finding that you have more time to read. You click off the mindless tv show or decide that 20 status updates might do it for Facebook today, and you read instead. Good choice.
And, finally,#7: When someone asks you that question, and you are reading, and you remember what you’re reading, then it’s time: don’t be shy. Sing out the answer. You’re reading the Kama Sutra? Or 1,000 Ways to Memorialize Your Cat with Paper Mache? Or Love’s Lustful Longings, a Romance of the Highlands? Sing it out. This is the opposite of fuzzling. The effect is marvelous, miraculous, and immediate. The asker will be the embarrassed one. He will mutter. scratch forehead, wander away. You will smile, victorious. You are a reader and you’re reading what matters to you and you don’t care who knows it. That’s a good feeling.
Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to be ashamed of not being ‘outgoing’. But a writer’s job is ingoing. -Ursula K. LeGuin
Make it a good day.
